8.
It is necessary to say just whom we regard as our
antagonists: theologians and all who have any theological blood in their
veins—this is our whole philosophy. . . . One must have faced that menace
at close hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly
and almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly
(—the alleged free-thinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems to
me to be a joke—they have no passion about such things; they have not
suffered—). This poisoning goes a great deal further than most people
think: I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard
themselves as “idealists”—among all who, by virtue of a higher
point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look upon
it with suspicion. . . The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all
sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (—and not only in his hand!); he
launches them with benevolent contempt against “understanding,” “the
senses,” “honor,” “good living,” “science”.
he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive
forces, on which “the soul” soars as a pure thing-in-itself—as
if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not
already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and
vices. . . The pure soul is a pure lie. . . So long as the priest, that
professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is accepted
as a higher variety of man, there can be no answer to the
question, What is truth? Truth has already been stood on its head
when the obvious attorney of mere emptiness is mistaken for its
representative.
